the proper strokes
by Douglas
Messerli
Shūji
Kataoka (screenwriter and
director) 泳ぐ男 (Oyogu otoko)
(The Swimmer) / 1987
Shūji Kataoka briefly studied at the College of Economics
at Kanto Gakuin University before going to work as a producer and director at
Kan Mukai’s Shishi Productions, debuting with Yokoku Bōkō: Yaru! Sasu! In
1983.
He went on to direct, write, and produce a
number of what the Japanese describe as Pinku eiga or “Pink films,” erotic
works that in the West might be described as pornography, but is mostly without
full nudity or complete representation of the sexual acts involved. Generally,
alternating between the sexual episodes were action events that involved
violent action or other adventures that crossed genres to include gangster,
spy, detective, and other such dramas.
Noted commentator on Japanese cinema Donald
Richie described these productions as being “the limpest of softcore” sex.
“…Though there is
much breast and buttock display, though there are simulations of intercourse,
none of the working parts are ever shown. Indeed, one pubic hair breaks an
unwritten but closely observed code. Though this last problem is solved by
shaving the actresses, the larger remains: how to stimulate when the means are
missing. To work around this censorship, most Japanese directors positioned
props—lamps, candles, bottles, etc.—at strategic locations to block the banned
body parts. When this was not done, the most common alternative techniques are
digital scrambling, covering the prohibited area with a black box or a fuzzy
white spot, know as a mosaic or ‘fogging.’”
Pink films
were particularly popular in the mid-1960s, making up a large part of the
Japanese domestic market through the mid-1980s. Although most of these works
were heterosexual in nature, they increasingly grew in the 1970s and 1980s to
include gay sexual activities. Kataoka produced several very successful gay
films as well working in the adult entertainment industry as well, including
the “S&M Hunter” series, the “Rope and Boy” films, and the serial subway
rape films of which there were both heterosexual and homosexual variations.
In
his 1987 work The Swimmer Kataoka wove together several gay sexual
sessions with an almost inexplicable feeling by the wealthy brother Wataru and
his sister (Mayumi Matsumoto) that the boy is about to be kidnapped. If nothing
else, he often notices that people are following him, although when he hides
around a corner they simply walk on by.
The sister hires a tutor for Wataru who
is also to serve as a bodyguard, but, she soon discovers, except for having
studied karate as a young boy, he has no current skills to protect his young
charge, forcing her to immediately fire him.
Soon after, as she leaves a local public
gymnasium, she is surrounded by three homeless men. At that moment, the
swimming instructor (Tōru Nakane)—attempting to establish his own swimming
classes—passes by, she calling out to him for help. He claims that he presumed
they were her friends, but smelling them realizes her plight (the kind of societal slight that was common in Pinku films), and using his
considerable martial arts skills in the manner of Bruce Lee rushes to her
defense.
She attempts to hire him on the spot to
serve as bodyguard for her brother. But he is disinterested. She finally hints
at enough money that he is willing to do it simply to pay for the survival of
his swimming school.
Lest the reader imagine that I am about
to enter upon a long series of plot events, let me assure you that once Kataoka
has set up the situation the series of kidnapping mishaps serve only as
cinematic variation for the basically comic gay sexual copulations.
We have already observed the swimmer
teaching one of his pupils at home, a teaching method that as a young boy I surely
might have preferred over being bussed to the cold waters of a public pool in a
different small town twice a week. Both men, dressed only in their underwear,
the student lying upon the bed as if it were a white body of water, the swimming
instructor soon joins him to demonstrate a particular stroke which accidently
entails a maneuver in which, in a shifting of the hands, he ever-so-slightly
brushes against the student’s cock. He follows this up with demonstration of
the breaststroke, climbing on top of the other boy to combine the hand
movements with the proper contraction of his ass as the instructor clearly is
engaged in an anal fuck.
The young Wataru is clearly already gay,
rushing out most nights to a local gay bar. When the new bodyguard joins him,
however, he and his friends find the older man, who dresses up for the bar
visit like a “gay caballero,” as mostly embarrassingly, and Wataru engages them
to help get rid of the pest.
Meanwhile, the two engage twice in various
sexual activities, the most erotic of which is a variation of mutual
cock-sucking in the “69” position. Again, Kataoka manages to make this quite
erotic despite our inability to actually see what it is they are sucking upon.
Finally, Wataru’s quite neglected
sister, receives a call: her brother has been kidnapped, and the bodyguard, whose
drink one of Wataru’s friends has spiked with sleeping pills has left the boy
alone—the sleeping beauty meanwhile joined in bed by the boy who spiked his
drink.
When the swimmer
awakens to discover that the sister has received a telephone message that
Wataru has been kidnapped, he delivers the money, at the last moment leaping
into the air to take down the kidnapper—only to discover it is one of Wataru’s
friends, Wataru, himself, hoping to use the kidnap money for his own expenses.
Having uncovered their deceit, the
swimmer quickly quits his job. But when the sister still agrees to pay him his
salary, money that will save his swimming school, he begrudgingly remains on as
Wataru’s temporary body guard, particularly after witnessing a scene in which gangsters
with guns actually do attempt to grab the boy.
This time the swimmer actually saves
the boy’s life, Wataru now regretting his former tricks. The swimmer suddenly
perceives that it’s time to bring the young boy in manhood with a good fuck. He
works up to in in grand Pinku style, with a great deal of fully dressed
foreplay and a lot of later grunting and groaning.
When the gangsters return, this time
grabbing the boy at gunpoint, the two hoodlums who the swimmer originally “beat
off” (sorry, but the pun is in perfect style with this movie) slug and kick Wataru’s
bodyguard, presumably determined to kill him off. But this time, Wataru, now
having become a true man, grabs the gun and turns it on the gangster head,
while the swimmer sends them in true comic book style into the clouds.
The boy, so the swimmer has
determined, can now protect himself and he can go back to his swimming duties,
with a few home lessons, surely, on the side.
This somewhat charming Pinku eiga might
send even a homophobic prig into giggles—all without the guilt of having to
witness an actual nude human body!
Los Angeles, May
12, 2024
Reprinted from My
Queer Cinema blog (May 2024).
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